Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines by Rajiv MalhotraMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The book Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan is about the forces that are fragmenting India. While Islamic radicalism and Maoist insurgencies are two forces that are fragmenting India, Breaking India focuses on the North-South divide, as evidenced by its subtitle Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines.
Breaking India begins with a study of the construction of Aryan and Dravidian identities through the years and how this artificial divide was promulgated and led to setting different groups in opposition to each other. The book focuses on the construction of Dravidian identity, rather than on deconstruction of the AIT - perhaps because others have done that, the authors don't say.
The most eye-opening part of Breaking India is about the roles that academia, evangelical Christian organizations, NGOs, "think tanks," and governments play in undermining India's unity. Shared interests lead to unlikely pairings such as left-wing intellectuals with evangelical Christian interests. There are also unlikely alliances between Maoists and evangelical Christian entities in India's "Red Corridor."
I recommend Breaking India to anyone concerned about India's unity, and encourage readers to go beyond the main text to read the appendices and endnotes. Appendix B highlights references to the Vedas in Tamil religious literature and Tamil familiarity with smriti such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata - a testament to the unity in Indian civilization. Appendix C presents the extreme case of what can happen when separate identities are constructed and put in opposition to each other: the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that pitted Hutus and Tutsis against each other. Parallels are drawn with the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka that pitted Tamils and Sinhalese against each other.
Breaking India has a dedicated website, www.breakingindia.com.
Other examples of north/south interactions that I'd like to bring up (although they are not mentioned in the book):
- Chapter 18, Philosophical Feuds in South India and Kashmir: 800 to 1300 CE of The Hindus An Alternative History (Yes! I actually have something good to say about Wendy Doniger's tome) discusses the influences that South Indian Shaivism and Kashmiri Shaivism had on each other.
- South Indians were the first to greet Swami Vivekananda upon his return from America.
- Understanding Hinduism notes that South Indian priests taught North Indian priests how to conduct Vedic ritual after suppression during Muslim rule.
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